


An End to All Things

by kototyph



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Obliviousness, Pining, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Village life, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: They have a schedule today, as they haven’t most days. It’s long past peak tourist season on the Devil’s Dyke, but there are enough locals and visitors like themselves to rate a Christmas market. Aziraphale’s been loudly looking forward to the event for weeks, Crowley knows, without ever once acknowledging a very important fact.“So,” he says, prodding Aziraphale’s mug of tea back to steaming. “It’s getting a bit nippy in the mornings.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 102
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	An End to All Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gemennair](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=gemennair).



> A mix of your second and third prompts, because I do love a good case of unintended domestic bliss.

There’s frost in the corners of the windowpane, diamond-clean facets refracting the dawn’s slow encroachment on the night. Crowley blinks at it, eyes heavy with the pleasure of a cold nose and warm everything else, bedding heaped and tucked around his body until nothing is exposed. There’s a hint of woodsmoke filtering into the small, snug bedroom, and the savory smell of rashers on the stove.

Outside his room, the floorboards creak, and someone is humming the middle bars of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as they wander by. It’s the sound of a putter in progress if he’s ever heard one. Crowley’s tempted to close his eyes again, let the pink light strengthen to gold before he goes to remind Aziraphale they’d agreed on secular music only in the cottage, but.

There’s frost in the window.

Unwinding himself from the sheets is a production, and he’s halfway tempted to go limbless and slither his way out of the tangle. That way lies a cold belly on unforgiving hardwood, though, so Crowley pulls arms and legs from their respective cocoons and hurriedly slips his feet into the slippers he’d kicked off into corners the night before, now miraculously lined up on the rug next to the bed. 

The angel is at the sink when Crowley emerges, pulling on a jumper over his (black, silk) pyjamas. It clashes horribly, awful and oatmeal and cabled in some obscure island’s preferred knit, but it’s also thick and more importantly stolen, which makes it excellent attire for any demon as far as he’s concerned.

The owner of the jumper looks over his shoulder and smiles, and Crowley has to avert his eyes lest he struck blind. _“Ergh.”_

“Oh, terribly sorry,” Aziraphale says without a trace of apology, and the aura of heavenly benevolence fades a bit from the kitchen. “How did you sleep, my dear?”

He’s set the small, rough-hewn table for two, though there’s enough blistered tomatoes and fried potatoes to feed an army. “Like the proverbial rock,” Crowley says, choosing to skirt the table for now in favor of eeling up to the stove. He leans into Aziraphale’s space just to snake an arm around and steal a thick slice of bacon from the serving plate behind him.

“What are you—? Stop that, I’m almost ready to serve.”

“No,” Crowley decides after a thoughtful moment, mouth full, and steals another. Aziraphale aims a swat at his knuckles and, when that doesn’t catch him, a soft but full-body check that bounces him gently away from the counter. Crowley stumbles back dramatically and Aziraphale points the spatula at him as though it were wreathed in holy flame. 

“Begone, foul beast! I’ll bring the plate out in a minute.”

“I’ll starve,” Crowley says mournfully.

“You will not. _Sit._ ”

Crowley has draped himself in limpid Romantic anguish over their farmer’s chairs when Aziraphale comes to the table to serve, eyes turned sadly to the windows and the sear, barren fields rolling away in all directions.

“You are a ridiculous creature,” the angel tells him, so fondly the feeling puts palpable warmth into the air between them. “Toast?”

“Nah,” Crowley says, and takes it instead from Aziraphale’s plate once the tomatoes have made it properly soggy.

They have a schedule today, as they haven’t most days. It’s long past peak tourist season on the Devil’s Dyke, but there are enough locals and visitors like themselves to rate a Christmas market. Aziraphale’s been loudly looking forward to the event for weeks, Crowley knows, without ever once acknowledging a very important fact.

“So,” he says, prodding Aziraphale’s mug of tea back to steaming. “It’s getting a bit nippy in the mornings.”

“I know,” Aziraphale says cheerily, knife and fork working at excruciatingly proper angles. “Lovely, isn’t it? Time for the heavy down, I should think.”

“Certainly. If we had some, which we don’t.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale says as he attends to the potatoes with vigor. “The landlady laid them in for us last week, they’re in the attic. I’ll pull them down after breakfast, shall I?”

“Well,” Crowley says, stymied. “Why not.”

“Splendid.”

“Splendid,” Crowley echoes. A different tack, then. “I’ve put up all I can from the garden. It’s through for the year, I think.”

“What about those beautiful cold-weather cabbages they had at the market this week? We could ask for some pointers from the farmer and her wife, such lovely people--”

“Mmm,” says Crowley, who thinks the cabbages in question look like a normal vegetable somehow stricken with the plague. They’re _purple._ “We could. Though you know as well as I do a cabbage does not a Garden make. Don’t even think we had that one at first— the humans made it, somewhere along the line.”

“So terribly clever of them,” Aziraphale says admiringly. “There must be other things we can grow? I’m sure the ladies will let us know.”

“But there’ll snow soon, it’s near solstice,” Crowley tries. 

“You’re quite correct, my dear,” Aziraphale says. “Shame on us for not getting the orangery in proper order before now.”

“ _Angel_ ,” Crowley groans.

“What? That was one of the reasons we let the property, yes?”

He couldn’t really be this obtuse without it being deliberate. Could he? “It’s awfully _late_ in the _year_ to be starting new projects, don’t you think?” Crowley says desperately.

“Nonsense. The time is especially ripe— we’ll need to start a few now, to keep ourselves occupied if we get snowed in,” Aziraphale says, and delivers himself another mound of bacon. “I imagine the state of these lanes is tragic with even a quarter metre.”

“There is something we could do to avoid the snow, you know,” Crowley says, all out of subtlety. 

Aziraphale beams at him. “You are a positively _shocking_ homebody sometimes, Crowley, but you promised to accompany me to the Christmas market and you’re not getting out of it.”

“It’s not— the market is— _fine,”_ Crowley says, even though it really isn’t. All those blobby wool hats and homemade wreaths and _people_. “Fine.”

“Excellent,” Aziraphale says. “Do you think you’ll be ready to leave by one?”

* * *

Crowley’s problem— like so many before it— is complicated, entirely of his own making, and centers queasily on what Aziraphale might think should Crowley be foolish enough to tell him about it.

On or about two months ago, they’d been in London— beautiful dreary stinking London— Crowley drunk off his arse on Aziraphale’s antique Uzbek carpets. Aziraphale, as drunk but not quite as prone to loss of limb control, had been moping in the window at the rain, which he seemed to think was sent to bother him personally. Gesturing with a full wine glass, Crowley had proposed that they, like all sensible new pensioners, might consider a seaside getaway in reward for their unexpected retirement from active duty. He'd made the suggestion the way he often makes them: fully expecting an immediate clucking refusal from Aziraphale.

“The sea? Oh, should we?” Aziraphale had said instead, eyes slowly brightening in a way that was extremely concerning if you’d known him long enough. “The South Downs! Brighton! I haven’t been there in ages— it sounds like just the ticket.”

“Ah?” Crowley had said from the floor, mildly horrified. 

“I know you enjoy the rush and bustle, my dear, but sometimes it is nice to get away in the warmer months to somewhere more _civilized_ ,” Aziraphale had said, turning away from the window to clap his hands together excitedly. “We can always come back when the weather turns.”

“Oh,” Crowley had said, watching him glance around the crowded room and with a sense of foreboding. “If you’d really like to...”

“Of course!” Aziraphale had exclaimed. “Now, where _is_ that trunk of mine?” 

And here Crowley is, prowling depressedly along a twee country lane into town with Aziraphale bobbing like a happy cork beside him, practically skipping, a covered basket over his arm. The wind is a bit nippy and the clouds low, but as they step from gravel to cobbles the angel is broadcasting cheer with such relentless intensity that lampposts sprout spontaneous giant bows in his wake, the trees grow fairy lights, and little dogs find themselves cozened deep in sweaters with knitted snowmen before they can so much as widdle. Being within arm’s length of all that is categorically, expansively terrible. Crowley’s reflexive countermeasures kick in, and every iteration of _Santa_ in sight has turned to _Satan_ by the time they round the corner onto the main street.

“Really, Crowley,” Aziraphale says disapprovingly as they pass the church, which has a sign that proudly reads _BEST SAUSAGE SUPPER / IN SOUTH DOWNS / COME AND EAT / PASTOR THOMAS RESSLER._

“That wasn’t me,” Crowley protests. “ _Sausage supper_ , honestly.”

The kids from the local grammar school have cunningly positioned themselves at the very start of market, selling lukewarm cocoa and biscuits as hard as rocks. They perk up as soon as they see Aziraphale coming. 

“Cocoa, Mr. Fell?” calls one. “You’ll take one, won’t you?”

“It’s for a school trip!”

“Our teacher’s taking us to see the museums in London!”

“No one’s buying any…”

“But it’s really good, we made it ourselves!”

“What are you, Dickensian street urchins?” Crowley snarls at them. But it’s a small hamlet and familiarity has bred contempt; neither the children nor Aziraphale pay him any mind. Crowley sips the watery chocolate he knows Aziraphale won’t touch and sulks in the background of the angel’s utterly predictable pontifications on the best museums to be found, until he finds an opportunity to derail it by singing the praises of the Horniman and its walrus. The idea that such an institution exists and might be visited utterly transports the children.

“Horniman!”

“Horniiiiiimaaaan!”

“ _Really,_ Crowley,” Aziraphale mutters under his breath, “must you?”

“Horniwalrus!”

“They’re tusks, though, aren’t they?”

“Tuskyman!”

“Hornytusks!”

“I fear I must,” Crowley says, hand to his heart. “The Horniman Museum is not to be missed. The biscuits look nice too, don’t they? Why don’t I buy you a few dozen?”

Aziraphale gets him back at the next stall in, because it’s old Molly Smith and her handknit gewgaws. The angel takes a positively demonic amount of delight in kitting Crowley out in teal and maroon from neck to head to fingertips.

“You look so nice, Mr. Crowley,” the old woman warbles, even though she’s blind as a blind bat and it shows. 

“Did you hear that, dear?” Aziraphale says with malicious sweetness. “She says you look nice!”

Crowley’s knitted earflaps aren’t in the same county as even, so he hears her just fine. _“Mmph.”_

“I think it suits you,” Aziraphale says, smiling into Crowley dark glasses. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Smith, we’ll take them all.”

 _“Mmph!”_ says Crowley, who can barely breathe through the layers of scratchy yarn wound around his face, and can only paw at them thanks to the mittens trapping his fingers together. 

“Something for yourself, Mr. Fell?”

Aziraphale pats her hand. “Oh, Mrs. Smith, I wouldn’t dream of monopolizing your stock.”

They go from booth to booth, and acquire wreaths, and candles, popcorn tins and candies. Nothing they need, most of it an excuse for Aziraphale to visit with every blasted person in the square and then some; Crowley sneaks off to smoke with the unfortunate spouses of the more chattily-inclined, which happens to include the farmer’s wife. They sit on crates and the kerb behind the chip shop and she tells him most winter cabbage is meant to be ornamental and tastes like shite; even the edible stuff is so tough the only thing you can do is stew the hell out of it.

“Very bad at getting the hell out of things, me,” Crowley says, blowing a long stream of smoke into the eaves.

“Yeah, make the missus do it,” the local green grocer says, already tapping a second out of his box. “Then he won’t be making any daft plans about winter gardens.”

“We were supposed to have left by now,” Crowley grumbles, taking a drag so long half the fag turns to ash. “Won’t give me any idea of when we’ll go back. Won’t even discuss it.”

“Yeah, my Hugh was like that,” one of the women says. “Spent one week beachcombing and wanted to stay forever.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“He’s a lawyer and I’m a fooking investment banker, mate. We come back on holiday, but unless he wants to be my kept man we’re not looking into real estate until we’re both retired.”

“Village could use a good lawyer for the Trust,” the green grocer pipes up. “Our old one’s almost ninety.”

She points a nude-painted nail at him. “You breathe a word of that to him and I’ll cut your tongue out, Tom,” she says in deadly seriousness.

Aziraphale is the one to find them all, having “followed the smell of shirking,” he says severely, eyeing Crowley’s stubby Pall Mall with disapproval. “Carry these, please.”

It’s three whole chickens in a bag, along with mince pies and sausages and cheeses and, yes, cabbages. A human wouldn’t have been able to lift them, let alone loop them around his elbows as daintily as Aziraphale does.

“Coor,” says the farmer’s wife. “Have fun with that.”

“Cheers,” Crowley says to the group, and wallows after Aziraphale like a sandbagged zeppelin.

Evening is coming on, and the sky starts to drip a sullen mix of precipitation on their heads about halfway up the lane. There are no curry takeout restaurants or tube stops to duck into out here, on the windswept fields of the downs, but Aziraphale produces an enormous umbrella that glimmers white as crushed pearls and extends it over Crowley’s head. He’s still wet when they reach the back door shifting from side to side in sodden boots while Aziraphale unlocks the door and the umbrella fades to nothing above them.

Crowley sets their shopping on the kitchen table and takes a seat while Aziraphale busies himself putting things away. Before it can get whisked away, he takes one of the candles and blows on the wick to light it.

“Could you start the fire, too, dear?” Aziraphale says from the cupboard, and Crowley looks over his shoulder at the dark grate.

“Oi!” Fire leaps sheepishly into existence, like a busboy caught sleeping. “That’s better.”

“Much better,” Aziraphale says, putting a saucepan on the stove.

While Aziraphale settles into another long putter, Crowley pries off the hideous mittens, then his boots, scowling at the leather until the salt stains crawl away. He sets them in front of the fire to dry, followed by his coat, and starts the long process of unwinding Mrs. Smith’s scarf from his person.

He stays there, looking into the fire, Aziraphale humming in the background, until he just can’t bear it anymore. “After the holidays, then?”

“Hm?”

“After the holidays, we’ll go back. To London.”

Crowley is still looking at the fire, so he has no idea what face Aziraphale makes behind him. Whether it’s confused, or surprised, or annoyed. What he hears is the spoon in the saucepan slide to a halt, and silence.

“Can’t say I’ve thought that far ahead,” Aziraphale says, after too long a pause.

“But— soon?” Crowley says. 

“Soon…?”

“We both have things to do, after all,” Crowley says, hunching his shoulders. "Plants to water. Books to dust.” Separate lives to live.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says quietly. “I suppose that’s true.”

Crowley hears footsteps, then, and Aziraphale joins him in front of the fire. The cottage, the village, they suit him, Crowley thinks— maybe it’s the other way around. Though he’s always had a propensity for comfortable over fashionable, Crowley has never seen more corduroy and beige jumpers. He looks like a comfortable couch.

But his mouth is held in a flat line, eyebrows peaked as if in pain, and Crowley knows the angel has strayed dangerously far down the path of Getting the Wrong Idea.

“You can of course return to London, my dear,” the angel says, voice muted. “I don’t mean to keep you here if you’d rather away.” 

“It’s not that at all!” Crowley says, perhaps a bit too emphatically, his whole body jerking towards Aziraphale. “I just— I want to be prepared. For… when this ends,” he says pleadingly, almost swallowing the last few words. Because it will, inevitably. Aziraphale has always drifted in and out of Crowley’s existence like a capricious tide, capable of both floods and arid emptiness. This is the highest watermark they’ve yet reached, and Crowley can’t shake the fear it might be followed by desert.

Aziraphale stands next to him, a mug cupped in both hands, and stares up wordlessly into his face. It’s intensely uncomfortable, like being an ant under a child’s magnifying glass. Crowley feels the tips of his ears start to burn, his unbuttoned collar still somehow suffocating.

Then Aziraphale turns abruptly towards him, and takes Crowley’s glasses off his nose. 

Crowley’s hands fly up, but he doesn’t grab them back. “What—?”

“I don’t want this to end,” the angel announces abruptly. 

Crowley blinks rapidly at him. “Sorry?”

“I do not wish to go back to London,” Aziraphale says. “I want to stay right here, with you, in this darling little house, through the winter and spring and next summer, and then maybe when it’s been a year I’ll consider it. Not a moment before.”

“Ah,” Crowley says, and when nothing else comes to mind, “oh.”

“Would that suit you as well?” Aziraphale asks him, chin raised.

“But your shop—”

“Fuck,” Aziraphale enunciates, “the shop.”

“Oh,” Crowley says weakly, feeling like his whole body is dangerously close to igniting. “Alright, then.”

“Well?” Aziraphale says, face settling into lines less resolute and more— scared, Crowley thinks. He looks scared. “Would you like to stay here with me?”

“... yes,” Crowley says. Everything from his ankles up is wobbly, but he still says, “Yes, I think I would.”

“Well. Good,” Aziraphale says. 

“Good,” Crowley responds.

“Excellent,” Aziraphale says thickly, and turns and raises his mug, drinking whatever it is in huge gulps. He walks rapidly back to the kitchen with the mug covering most of his face, leaving Crowley staring after him. 

He feels… unaccountably gooey. It’s not a feeling he’s familiar with, and a bit embarrassing, but he thinks he could get used to it.

“Really very good cocoa,” Aziraphale mumbles without looking back at him. “You should have some to wash the taste of that other stuff out of your mouth.”

“They were children, Aziraphale,” Crowley says, which the angel answers with a supercilious sniff.

“I’m not eating those biscuit abominations, either.”

“Ah, well,” Crowley says, moving slowly towards the kitchen and the second mug Aziraphale sets out like an invitation, “maybe the birds will have a go.”


End file.
